Also media.
Hi everyone, and welcome to the podcast.
It's me James today and I am lucky to be joined again by Mick. We're going to talk today about Libya, and just like right off the top, this is going to be a sad episode. Not much good happens to migrants in Libya. A lot of bad stuff happens. And if you someone who prefers not to hear about like violence or sexual violence or incarceration, it's probably some other stuff I'm overlooking. This might not be the episode for you, and that's fine.
But Mick, how you doing.
Hi James, I'm goods. I'm goods.
That was an uplifting intro, wasn't it. I felt like that was a really positive way to start the show.
Yes, definitely, definitely, but probably very warranted because it's not going to be a fun episode. Like, there's torture, there's imprisonments, there's some slave months. It's horrible. Yeah, Libya is probably one of the worst countries in the world to be a migrant at the moment, if not the worst.
Yeah, I and you have a whole industry, a whole part of their economy that is predicated on enslaving migrants. Lately selling people and all of the other kinds of violence that come from that.
Exactly.
There's I think over twenty or thirty different facilities with varying degrees of government involvement in those facilities, and it's very hard to pinpoint exactly like where does the government and where does this human trafficking business begin? Right, It's similar to like early mid Soviet Union, where there was so much organized crime happening within the government that it was also impossible to distinguish, like where one began and where the other ended.
Yeah, like which was which exactly.
It was under breast nev I think, but don't don't quote me on that.
Yeah, so yeah, so give us a lad only.
Well, first of all, maybe I guess if people have been not listening, why are we talking about Libya?
Well, on May eighth, that was reported that the Trump administration was considering sporting migrants to this North African country, which is a new low. Yeah, like the bar is buried and these motherfuckers just grabbed the shovel. I don't think it's possible to exaggerate just how cruel this would be if it were to happen. As I said earlier, Libya is probably the worst country in the world to
be a migrant at the moment. And to illustrate that, I'm going to briefly quote from this twenty twenty two and it's the International article Men, women and children returned to Libya returned in this case meaning that they tried to cross the Mediterranean and were picked up by the Libyan coast guards. Returned to Libya face arbitrary detention, torture, cruel and inhumane detension conditions, rape and sexual violence, extortion,
forced labor, and unlawful killings. Instead of addressing this human rights crisis, the Libyan Government of National Unity now called the GMU, continues to facilitate further abuses entrench impunity, as illustrated by its recent appointment of Mohammed al Koha as Director of the Department for Combating Illegal Migration, which we will be referring to as the DCIM from now on.
To make that entire list. Somehow worse, there has been extensive documentation from human rights groups that strongly suggest that the DCIM works together with non governmental militias, making the latter responsible for at least six unofficial detention centers. Although it is reasonable to assume that there might be more.
So reporting out of Libya is hard to understate it. Yes, Sally Hayden has an excellent book called My Fourth Time We Drowned that Like, one of the things I like about it is it explains like her journalistic process, and it's people who are detained in places where they can't get out clubbing together to get one message out on the one phone that one person smuggled in in part right, use someone had the battery, someone had the screen or whatever, and someone else had a SIM card and like that
way they could they could get a message out. But it's everything that we hear about. We can assume that there is probably a lot more of it happening that we haven't heard about, or at least some more of it happening that we haven't heard about.
Yeah, the worst part about this is that it's knowing that it's probably worse and it's probably more extensive than we know. Because Yeah, as you said, Livia is a hard country to do this kind of reporting, and I am assuming that it's not very safe for a journalists to just go there and go talk to people.
Yeah, Yeah, And like at the end of the day, you're not just as I'm sure you'll explain, You're not just fucking with the Libyan government. You're fucking with the European Union is absolutely complicit in this and like they ain't coming to save you.
We'll get to that how work. The EU is complicited in both funding and in actions. Yeah, so let's first get this onto the proper context. We're going to dive for bits into the history of Libya because that plays a major part in how this situation is right now. So we'll start by talking about the former dictator Muamar Kadaffi. He took control of Libya through a military kudetta and ruled it from nineteen sixty nine up until he faced mob justice in the Libyan Civil War in twenty eleven.
He is or was accused of human rights violations and cracking down heart on this scent and opposition. Initially was on the list of states which sponsored terrorism, but from two thousand and four onwards he slowly began can to rekindle ties with a number of countries, with one of the main champions for rehabilitation being Italy, the former colonial power that had occupied Libya. To no one's surprised we're
bringing in colonialism here. Now, James, you get three guesses as to what one of the cooperations was between Libya and Italy.
Well, I can get many things. Ray, there's some stories about good Affi and Berlusconi, but we won't talk about this. Was it preventing migrant crossing the Mediterranean Sea?
Yes, that is true.
Yeah, something the Italians love to do.
It was happening back then as well. Yeah, it's a really weird relationship between Italy and Libya. That's also kind of fascinating. But then we're going to get all the way off topic if we dive into that.
Yeah.
So, somewhere between two thousand and four and two thousand and five, Libya was supplied with money and equipment to help stem the flow of illegal migration coming from Africa. Kadaffi himself said in twenty ten that this was to prevent the loss of European cultural identity to a new black Europa, after Libya was paid fifty million euro for this purpose that same year.
Yeah, yeah, based anti colonial Yes, I'm sure that's a Gadaffi did nothing wrong movement that exists on some corner of Reddit that I haven't Oh, got that plumitted into yet, but yeah, this guy was a third.
I cannot find a stick long enough that I would touch that community with, to be honest. That's also something that plays in here, and that I think, like you read a lot of human rights reports, you come across it. But there's also like a distinct form of racism for Sub Saharan or like Eastern African people. Definitely, Yeah, that's also going to play into this. It's just a smorgas board of bad stuff.
Yeah, I mean for people who perhaps grew up in the United States, you know for their were and received verio education in school about African geography and politics like this can be hard to grasp, right, Like Africa is sometimes perceived as a country, not a continent in sort of discourse in the United States. And that's again like it's not people's fault, like it's it's in nature of
our education system failing people. But yeah, if you're not familiar, rarely view it's called in North Africa, and like great replacement style racist conspiracies absolutely exist in North Africa about people from Sub Saharan Africa. Either that the parts of Africa that are beneath the Sahara desert and in the which you could find by looking at them that. But yet like just because this is in Africa, like racist shit is absolutely going down. No.
I think it was highlighted a bit when the president or Prime Minister of Tunisia was cracking down on migration that there was also like a very distinct racism against against sub Saharan Africans.
Yeah, but it is.
It's a global thing where because racist is a social construct and it's not like an inherent thing that that You'll hear this a lot. You know, I've worked in Hispaniola a lot, Right, the island that contains hating Dominican Republic, the island which receives millions of dollars from the United States to reinforce the border between the two nations that
make it up. You will hear this reference to Haitian people as black from Afro Caribbean Dominican people, right, And this idea that there's this racial distinction between the two, that it's a nature of race, right, it's quite social construct between mobilized to create a power dynamic.
Yeah, that's a whole other topic of discussion, because I identity and race are so intermingled but also so fluid. Yeah, you could talk for hours about it, but that's not
why we're here. Yeah, a warming up ties with Libya was a pragmatic approach from the EU, as it lies just on the doorstep of Fortress Europe, but also marked the start of set fortress to start externalizing its borders into Africa, slowly working towards ki migrants and refugees from setting food on European soil, which would entitle them to
apply for asylum. So even that step that's encoded in European law, we're trying to like circumvent by just making sure that they don't cross the Mediterranean.
Right.
So sometime later, when the civil war began during the Art Spring, Yeah, Libyan dissidents got rid of the sex best that was more mar Kadaffi. So the world became a slightly better place after that. Currently, there are two major factions fighting over power in Libya, although there are numerous other groups involved. To dive into this would probably take up most of the episodes, so I will leave
that aside. Yeah, the first of the major factions is the GNU, the Government of National Unity, led by Prime Minister Abdul Ahmit de Deba even fills the north west of Libya, including the capital Tripoli. The other faction is led by US Libyan national Khalifa Hafta, who commands the Libyan National Army or LNA, who expressed loyalty to the elected governments and are therefore often referred to as the ho R the House of Represented Sentatives. I will try
to be consistent with the sacronyms, but no guarantees. Unsurprisingly, after I was mentioned in accusations made in twenty three for his militia's treatment of migrants, with some reports indicating that they or he may be profiting of the smuggling SAM. We pretty much got a warlord over there with an army at his disposal who's not disincentivized not treat migrants as things for his own profit.
Yeah right.
Another fun fact that reveals how absolutely fucked up the situation is the capture and subsequent release of infamous warlord Osama Ala Mustri by Italy. Almasri had outstanding of warrants from the International Criminal Court due to him having the TRIPLEI branch of detention centers backed by the Special Defense Force, both of which are used of atrocities and war crimes during the Civil War. He was captured in Turin after
a soccer match. The ICC requested he be arrested, but they turn based tribunal declined to approve the prove it, after which Almasriios res niece back into Libya Jesus.
So yeah, right, we.
Love our ICC and then not following through on it.
Yeah, right, Like the ic C does not in fact have an army that it can send out to people who completely ignore it.
Yeah, it's a body that doesn't have any power to really enforce decisions. I know that the current Dutch Prime Minister said of Benjaminett and Yahoo that they could just ignore the outstanding warrant for his arrest, that Yao could just visit the Netherlands, which, like, I don't even know what to say about that.
Yeah, I mean, this is the nature of what you're talking about in an extent, right, like the ICC's rulings and all human rights only exist insofar as they are convenient to the powerfuls as in the world.
It's very much a rules for d but not for me kind of attitudes.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I find it extremely disheartening and I feel myself growing more cynical because of this world that I grew up in, and I'm slowly seeing that all the rules and all the great things that I was taught in school are kind of not rules but more like guidelines.
Yeah, yeah, and that only applied to certain people.
It's really heartbreaking to see, Like I mean, I've heard it a lot from people, right, but especially from Burmese people. They really educated themselves an international law when they were
going out to protest. At first, they talk about the r twop, like the responsibility to protect, which is it doesn't matter to concept in international law, but I've allowed someone to intervene, and like they thought, this is the international law, it's the world law, so someone's going to do it, and like no, you know, over the months that they were in the streets, over the thousands of deaths that they've seen, now they've come to realize that
that law isn't there to protect them, that there's no one who's coming to save them, and that's led to them building a very unique and beautiful revolution. But at the same time, it costs thousands of innocent lives, and it's heartbreaking to see their faith being misplaced in this institution. It doesn't care about it.
We can talk very high and mighty about all these laws and whether in war or whether about refugees, but in the end, very often they just seem worth as much as the paper they're written on. Yeah, exactly, It's okay to become cynical after that realization.
Yeah.
So, while the conditions for migrants were getting noticeably more horrible in the aftermath of the twenty eleven intervention by NATO, it was, as we said earlier, by no means the start could definitely very much used migration as leverage to gain concessions and standing among European governmental bodies. Exploitation of migrants was already reported by human rights ruts back in
two thousand and nine. A similar vein the fact that the Libyan Coast Guard routinely picks up migrants in the international waters to return them to Libya has also been documented as early as two thousand and nine. How Frontex is involved with that will get to that later. These processes and dynamics were very much already in play prior
to Cadelphie meeting his maker. This kidnapping of migrants, because I don't think there's a better or a harsher word for it is an explicit violation of international European and Italian law. Non refolment, which is the principle in these laws, means that no refugee shall be returned or expelled to a territory against their will where their freedoms and life
are threatened. From January first, twenty nineteen to June thirtieth, twenty twenty, Libya received sixty one point six million euros as part of the European Union Integrated Border Management Assistance Mission Mandate, with an explicit focus on establishing state security structures in the country. Funding is meant to help stem migration to Europe through strengthening the border management, law enforcement,
and criminal justice systems of Libya. Emphasis is placed on disrupting the networks that operate the smuggling and trafficking of persons. We already discussed these institutions are directly or indirectly contributing very often to the exploitation and enslavement of refugees. So that's sixty one million euros that has indirectly gone through those very systems that enslave and torture people.
Yeah.
So when many liberal authorities often have direct links to militias or organized crime groups that engage in these practices. Authorities in the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Interior, the Department to Combat Irregular Migration, the Libyan Coast Guard, and the Special Deterrence Force has all been implicated. It has got so bad that even the Ministry of Defense employs Coast Guard units that are made up of militias who profit from these human rights abuses.
Yeah, it's fastical to think that like you could throw some money at this problem and not just like more empower these people.
Yes, it's even I think when we talked last year about this, I think Rows from Migrant mentioned it. But the Libyans get paid twice because first they get paid to make sure that to return these migrants back to Libya, but then they can also get paid for selling them into slavery.
Do you what do you even say to that?
Yeah, I think it's genuinely unfavorable for a lot of people than twenty twenty five. People are absolutely being captured and sold into slavery. That is occurring.
Yes, I've read some Human Rights Watch accounts of people who were imprisoned for sometimes in years and then made to work in one way or another for whoever ran that particular detention center and the one that I'm thinking of right now, after six years, I think that person was able to buy himself away from the authorities than his boat was captured within thirty minutes after he got off the boat, Libya got back to a different attention center where he spent four days, and I think after
that he got another chance on the boat, and I think he was rescued by the volunteer or human rights organizations who are also patrolling the sea north of Libya.
Yeah, we interviewed some of them talking of patrolling the seas. Maybe this is an advert for a boat.
Yes, there will be a front TACs ad right now for all the European listeners.
Yeah, yeah, all right, we are back.
So we left off with just briefly mentioning how the Libyan state functions as part of this more than organized crime syndicateive profits from the abuse of innocent people. And this is in a way not really surprising. Back in eighty five, academic Charles Tilly already argued that the states as a form of social organization, it's pretty much indistinguishable
from an organized crime group. Yeah, I'll make sure that the sources in the description below if anyone is interested, But for those who don't want to read it, in very short, they're both major organizations over which you have very little control, and if you don't pay them the taxes or protection money that they want, then people will show up to break your legs. That's the two sentence explanation of that article.
Yeah, I like that.
After the principle of non refoulment has been violated, refugees are brought to detention centers in theory under the supervision of the DCIM. In practice, this does not hold up. There are no official or verified numbers of how many centers there are or how many people are even health captive. They Libyan numbers just somewhere between seventeen to thirty five
facilities holding over seven thousand people. Human rights groups have questions these numbers and argued that the number is likely between ten thousand and twenty thousand people being held captive. The reality is that we simply don't know. Yeah, we don't know exactly how many cent facilities there are to hold these people, and we don't know how many people are in them. Human rights watchers or UN delegates often don't get the full picture even if they go there
to visit and inspect the places. There was one part of what I read where they would only be allowed during the day, but then at night is when most of the horrible stuff happens. Yeah, So still there's very much a process of trying to not show what is being done there. People in these detention centers are held indefinitely and lack any sort of legal processes or procedures
to determine their state. In fact, according to a twenty nineteen RUN report, there is no official procedure to assess asylum status in Libya, meaning that in the legal sense, this category is absolutely meaningless.
Yeah.
On top of that, there's also a lack of a process for exiting entertainment, so that that's an entire procedure that is just done at the whim of whoever happens to control like that particular facility.
Yeah, and that could be someone who has just like seized it by arms from whoever controlled it last, right, exactly.
There's sometimes facilities are abandoned and they can become official. There's also been reports of the government rating like unofficial centers, but then recapturing those people and put them in official centers.
Great, that'll make it better.
It would be funny if it wasn't so fucking horrible.
Yeah, yeah, that's bleak.
The DCM closed down five centers that had a history of human rights violations. This act, however, had little effect on halting abuses. Reports of beatings and torture continued as some official centers closed by the DCIM quickly became unofficial sites reopened and operated by militias. For example, the Buisa official Attention Center in Saweya was ordered to close due to reports of sexual abuse taking place. He reopened a day later and operated under a new name managed by
armed groups. Dtaee explanation was seamlessly transferred from official to unofficial banners, helping empower militants and criminal actors in the region. So we're now going to take a deeper look at these centers. I found an amazing article by Nadia aldayon Aaron Anfinson and Graham Anfinson in there, and James that this Israel the Journal of Human Trafficking, which is an actual academic journal that exists.
Jesus, Yeah, I mean, I guess, yeah. If there's the thing someone has written their PhD. This station about it, it makes sense.
I imagine this journal is just one or two articles and for the rest it's just pictures of Jeffrey Epstein and Andrew Tate, just back to back to back, because ah yeah again, would would be funny if.
It wasn't so fu Yeah, yeah, I can't. I can't imagine working as an editor at the Journal of Human Trafficking. Is the job that like you have that is like the like the special force selection cause of mental health. Yeah, like you you are facing all the challenges that can be thrown in a person.
Oh yeah, I'm sure there's like a psychologist like on standby at the journal just to make sure like that that the people running guitar all right.
Yeah.
So these academics distinguished between three types of centers, official meaning they are run by the states in so far as that means anything, of course, then there are the two unofficial types, which I will call semi official and officious. Semi official centers are those run partially by state forces in cooperation with local groups, militias, or other non state actors. Officious centers are those run entirely by non state forces, while conditions in official centers are air quotes better than
the latter two. It's by no means a good place to be. None of these free categories are exempt from all the violence being done to people. All three have been named and implicated in abuses and violations. According to the authors, there are about twenty one official sites, twelve semi official and twenty two officious sides, with one reportedly being run by ISIS in Naphalia back in twenty to fifteen. Cool ISIS had a stronghold in Libya back in the day.
Yeah, I did.
Yeah, And the fact that ISIS might have been involved in human trafficking is the least surprising thing here.
Yeah.
I mean they were trafficking people into the Islamic State, into their what are their so called Cali right.
Yeah, this is progressed, and now trafficking people away from it. Yeah, this is a small victories. Of all these sites that I just mentioned, a remarkable amount is intriqually, the capital of Libya. Sometimes these sites overlap with areas with known prostitution rings. The researchers found at least nine such networks, with the majority of the sex slaves being from sub Saharan regions and to east Africa, they are mostly women,
but it also happens to men. Libya has no laws or procedures to criminalize male sex trafficking while men are still the minority. I do think it's worth mentioning. Yeah, absolutely, that is also something that happens and most likely underreported on.
Yeah, I think it's something you'd really struggle, Like the nature of masculinity and like its toxicity makes it hard for people to come forward to you and say this is happening to.
Me, right exactly, And it makes that that process becomes even harder if there is no legal framework to stand on.
Yeah, exactly, there's like there's nothing to say, like this is that at least you can say what's happening to you is wrong. It's perceived as a crime, right, Like, if that's not there, it says no, like how can I support this person?
Right?
Who do you direct that person to? Like exactly, anybody who has been trafficked and forced into sex work, like, and I've spoken to migrants for whom that has been the case. Like there's a great deal of stigma they have to overcome, which they shouldn't have to, Like, it's not none of what's happened to them is their choice, but it's very difficult for them to talk about it, and it's very unlikely for them to really be able to get any form of accountability for the people who
did this to them. And that's in settings outside of Libya, like in Libya. Fucking good luck, I imagine, Like.
I think that's just a problem in general, not just in Libya. Yeah, it's arguably much worse than Livia. But yeah, even in countries that we're much more familiar with, this is happening, and it's still very hard to obtain the accountability from the perpetrators that any better world would be happening. Yeah, So I am now going to quote for the article for the next batch of horrors for women and girls,
various degrees of sexual violence were commonplace. Facilities that did allow some angio access barred visitations at night, which is when many severe abuses occurred. Detention center operators performed systemic rape on women and teenage girls on a nightly basis. Those that resisted were threatened with death. Others were killed by severe sexual assault and rape. Impregnations by detention center
of officials also occurred. So, yeah, I'm going to briefly cite the accounts of someone who has been for that Afni, which is a pseudonym. An eighteen year old Somali woman told me, very softly that she was gang raped by smugglers multiple times the end of the two years she spent confined in a smuggler warehouse in Kufra, released from the warehouse and dispatched the Tripoli defend for herself. When she became pregnant, Ofne gave birth to a little girl,
depending on handouts and help from strangers to survive. She told me that when she decided to attempt the sea crossing with her daughter, they ended up in another night marriage smuggler warehouse, where one of the smugglers refused to find food for her baby unless Afne had sex with him. Her daughter died when she was seven months old.
God, oh, what a fucking leak thing.
Yes, the entire article that that quote was frob is like a rife with crimes like this.
Yeah, right, is horrific stuff.
I'll make sure that it's in the notes below if you would want to read that. Yeah, and absolutely no shame with people don't want to read.
This because it is fucked Yeah, yeah, you didn't have to expose yourself to all this. You don't have to know every detail of it to care about people like, it's okay not to read it.
Yeah, ah, so I want to close this particular censu budget brutally driving this point home. But like women and teenage girls are being raped to death over there on a systemic level. Yeah, and I'm fucking disgusted with the fact that the EU is still sending money there that is indirectly facilitating this.
Yeah, I've mean fucking well, it gets on it's high horse about like gender and quality and women's rights and such things, and then like unless it's the inconvenient gender equality of migrants, right, or that the rights of migrants.
Which yeah, I need a cigarette now.
Fuck.
It's the fucking worst thing that I deal with talking to people about work. It's like people who have survived sexual violence, or like people who can reasonably expect to encounter it and making this journey because they think that it's there only option anyway.
Yeah, It's it's not that people who undertake this journey to a batel life that they once are unaware of the risks. It's despite the risks that they're just doing it.
Yeah, that's the same in the Americas, Rightly, people understand that the you know, I mentioned this in my Darien Gap episode, but very young children are subject to sexual violence, which also sometimes results in their death. Yeah, and like they understand that that world is at such an exaggerated level of inequality that people are willing to take those risks because that's the way the only way that they feel they can secure a safe future for their children.
Yeah. It is a level of courage that I cannot fathom. Yeah, me need that. The best I could do was just acknowledge that I can't fathom it. But that's also like a very bitter built to swallow.
Yeah, it is like I uh, you know, I attend wars for work sometimes. And the women who take on the migration, especially when not that men are not so back to sexual violence, say ah, but it's probably more likely for women to experience it. The women who take on the migration journey alone or with their children, like those people's bravery, Like I can't fathom being that brave. I can't imagine how one can be that courageous a dedicated to one's child. And we talked in our podcast
recently about Primrose who came with her daughter. Like that's someone I'm still like just in awe of, you know, like you don't see that kind of courage and dedication and just like ability to push through things that are horrific with this goal in mind of reaching the United States, Like it's and it continues to be something that I struggled to find words to express, obviously, but it's really something.
I want to say.
Something just speechless, Yeah, not much to say.
Uh, you know who else should be speechless?
Is it the products and services to support this podcast?
I sure hope. So just two minutes of silence.
Yeah, hopefully it will just be a little moment for quiet contemplation for all of you out there.
All Right, we're back.
We've we've had a glass of water, and we're going to keep doing the podcast anyway.
Yes, rehydrates a bit. Yeah.
Yeah.
So in terms of like explicit accounts, that was it. Okay, Yeah, So if someone had to skip over that part, that part of the episode should be done. You can start listening again. So as of this recording, They're Missing Migrants Project, who tracks migrant depths and those who become missing. Between our quotes, approximately thirty two thousand people are either dead or missing and presumed death in the Mediterranean that I have been confirmed Jesus. The overwhelming majority of these people
drowned while attempting the crossing. Two five hundred and eighty two of these cases were registered in twenty twenty four. Last year, roughly seventy thousand people attempted a crossing, according to statistics from the European Commission. This may not appear as a lot of deaths compared to the crossings, but this figure does not take into account deaths on the
journey towards the crossing. I was not able to verify how the number of seventy thousand was made up, as the EO website I got it from is a collection of data from different countries and agencies who register it.
What do you think is safe to assume, and let me emphasize assume here is that people captured by Italian multice cypriots or Libyan co authorities is included in this number, so that those are people who've attempted the crossing and then are taken back to Libya, possibly undertaking the journey again. Yeah right, because yeah, I know you've stressed this a few times. But a number one does not mean that it's just a single person. It can be the same person who tries to cross multiple times.
Yeah, right, people will will peak crossings. I think we reach a point where the numbers are not and not that every point of these people is a person, right, But like I would be any less pissed off if it was fifty thousand.
Like after a certain amount, it just becomes a number because we just can can't imagine how many people that is.
Yeah, Like we shouldn't ever have to conceive the thirty two thousand people drowning, right, that it's not a thing that in the twenty first century we should allow to happen as a society, Like, yeah, this shit, Like, you know, I've participated meat Day along the border and very familiar with death at the border, But the scale of this is unfathomable, even to someone who's spent a decent amount
of time across the migrant trails of the America. Is that two thousand and five hundred two deaths in a year.
Like that's a small village.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely the other yearly basis, Yeah, it's a decent size city. If you take that thirty two thousand number.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's like a mid sized music festival of people who didn't need to die.
Yes.
I checked the websites called info Migrants, and they estimate that the Libyan Coast Guard alone has returned again. Air quotes around twenty one thousand migrants are caught during a crossing attempt, So the vast majority of these people end up back in the detention centers we discussed earlier, So that's around one for every three and a half people being captured.
Jesus. Yeah. Yeah.
There was at some point a video making the rounds, and it was this African woman on a boat, filmed with like a mobile phone, and she was just crying and was just saying like, Hey, if the Libyan Coast God shows up, I'm jumping overboard. No way am I going back there.
Yeah, I've seen that.
That is one of those statements that I will immediately believe.
Yeah.
Yeah, people have self immolated in those detention centers like Suich just dead misery and their desire for the world to see them. I guess I can understand why someone would just rather stop being.
So the little calculation I just made that leaves us with forty nine thousand people making the crossing, of which eighty two diets resulting in forty six thousand, four hundred people entering Europe through the Libyan roots. Again, these are approximations. More exact numbers will never know. Yeah. I tried to track money and expenditures a tiny bit to see how the EU is dealing with this. It's not one of my strong suits. I want to be upfront with that.
I was able to find that between twenty twenty and twenty twenty three, THEE granted at least one hundred and five million euro under the European Integrated Border Management Assistance Mission. This is money that is directly going to Libya for assistance in managing our border. This number does not include money directly or indirectly given to Libya from individual member states or from the budget of the EU's Border Agency FRONTACS.
The latter has seen an absolute massive increase in their budgets. Yeah, from around two hundred and fifty billion in twenty sixteen to over eight hundred and forty billion in twenty twenty three.
God, yeah, that's a vast increase.
Yes, And what's relatively recently been happening is that rather than have their own vessels in the sea. They are using air reconnaissance in the form of drones or other airborne vehicles spot spot boat boats or thingies with migrants and then they give that information to the Libyan coast Guard they can pick them up, right. And this is where the EU is I would say, directly complicit in like the abuse that that that's happening in Libya.
Yeah, I think that's a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
Because we know what it is likely to certainly going to happen to the people that are picked up by the Libyan coast Guard.
Yeah.
And if you're saying that Haley beIN coasted Alcaemy pick up these people, you know what's going to happen to those people, like and it's not good. And they keep doing it despite it being more than a decade of evidence at this point abusive migrants.
Italy, in particular, as the country receives a lot of migrants from metaty Iranian crossings, is keen on helping Libya in terms of training, material and funding additional agreements between the two countries. At another uncomfortable light on the dynamic, there was first the EU Libya slash Italy Libya Memorandum
of Understanding signed in twenty seventeen. It saw an enhanced enhancement of military insecurity related to trying to prevent migrants from making a crossing advertently or inadvertently trying to make Libya their final stop and trap them there under the
conditions that we just discussed. That agreement is a continuation of the Treaty on Friendship, Partnership and Corporation that was signed by Libya and Italy back in twenty eighth which described the corporation in detail visv combating illegal migration from Libya to the EU. We also have the Multi Declaration from twenty seventeen which only strengthened unbacked governmental organs within the EU, as well as a commitment to further assist
Libya in training, in providing funding and technical assistance. Those are the main purposes of disagreements, which is to prevent people from passing the prestigious gates of Fortress Europe because politically, we'd rather add them to the mortar with which those walls are built.
Jesus.
And it is these conditions that Washington Ghules thought would be a suitable place to send migrants to who do not speak the language know the people have legal representation or assumably even have the money to do anything. We've barely spoken of the civil war that is still going on there, Yeah, with like fighting in the capital of
Troopoli happened like two weeks ago. We haven't spoken about any legal or law related issues that these people would invariably run into were they to be deported to Libya. It's the umpteen for example, of colonialism, military and from states, war wandering, and the transfer of problems to another place or to another generation. Very much like climate change, actions such as these will have immense direct and ripple effects that our children, anchorant children will learn the consequences of.
And the last bit I've added because let's hope that no one is going to be sent Olivia from the States. But I can very much imagine that those people will face the same horrors that they will have to create their own little communities just to be able to get by. Yeah, I can imagine some people might might run into ISIS
over there and become radicalized. We could also get like small pockets of people who just write a survived but are still stuck there and grow resentment there is no real way to estimate what the consequences are going to be of deporting pepeople there other than that like the cruelty is happening that Washington rules are aiming for.
Yeah, exactly.
I think that the point is to hurt these people as much as possible at the moment, and then there isn't really much of a long term thought process beyond that. Like, I guess I would like to say that people were enraged at the thought of the United States sending migrants to Liby, and they should be. I'm glad that they were, but they should also be in rage at the reality
of the European Union doing it every single day. Yes, way more than twelve people, and like you should care about that too, especially if you're in Europe, Like you know, obviously I am a person from Europe. I think it's easy, like for people to get this kind of smug social democracy kind of like, oh, look at the Americans, they're
so fucked up. Not saying things aren't fucked up here, they are, but like the EU is doing some fucked up shit to migrants, and like people in Europe should be in the streets about that too.
Definitely, like this is just the biggest of all the issues. But there's also abuses and human rights violations happening in the Balkans for the people who take that crossing, there's people who try to cross from a Rocco to Spain. Yeah, who also encounter again, not as bad as the things we just talked about, but by no means it's good.
Yeah, definitely shouldn't be happening.
I don't even want to use words like good or bad because like they tend to lose all meaning. Yeah, like less bad doesn't necessarily mean good.
Yeah, that's really doesn't.
It means less worse. And yeah, there are there are places to make that crossing that are less worse than Libya.
But still, yeah, that doesn't mean any of it is desirable, yeah, or like that we should accept any of it.
No, No, people should be fucking mad about all of this.
And I also I would like to have to go back a little bit about what you said about like this buck European the social democracy. Yeah, like that's definitely attitude that's not uncommon among Europeans. But then again, we very often fail to look into our own backyards. And also Europe just tends to be politically a few years behind the US, but we've also seen a rise in autocratic regimes like Victor Orbonn Yeah, massive example. Maloney in
Italy is another one. But also in my own country of the Netherlands, they try to bypass parliament in order to make an emergency law to make sure that migrants wouldn't enter the Netherlands, and as we speak, they're threatening to stop the government formation if no stricter measures against migrants are being taken.
Yeah.
So it's these little seeds of autocracy that are almost more worrying because it's these little step that happened and before you know it, things are getting worse quick.
Yeah.
Like, anyone who pays attention to the US can see that the vehicle on which fascism was delivered to us is being delivered to us in a better way of saying, it is anti micro sentiment, right, Like that is how this country built the toolkit that is now being used. And you know, the rest of the world should pay attention to that, I hope.
Yeah, we should see it as a warning sign, not as a manual.
Yeah. That's a good weapon, it.
Yeah, Unfortunately it's being used as a manual by certain European governments.
Yeah, so thank you for sharing that traumatic piece for reporting with I think that's that's rough.
I would say you're welcome if it wasn't a fucking grim to say that at the end of all that.
Yeah.
No, I'm happy that I read a lot and put together. I'm also going to have to find a puppy and cuddle the puppy for a few hours.
Yeah. So yeah, that's all I have for now. Great, Yeah, that's all I got to you. Thank you very much.
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